wed 17/09/2025

Opera Reviews

Duke Bluebeard's Castle, Philharmonia Orchestra, Salonen, Royal Festival Hall

Edward Seckerson

Sometimes the most disturbing images exist only in our imaginations - and so the questions posed in the preface to Bartók’s operatic masterpiece Duke Bluebeard’s Castle become especially pertinent: “Where did this happen - outside or within? Where is the stage - outside or within?” The answers, surely, lie “within”, making the prospect of a “semi-staged” climax to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Philharmonia Bartók series, Infernal Dance, a potentially troubling one.

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La Sonnambula, Royal Opera

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Imagine what John Cleese might have done with the tale of a slutty sleepwalker who finds herself staying at a packed provincial guest house? Bellini doesn't even touch on farce, let alone psychological investigation. He instead follows the archetypal bel canto formula: dramatic thinness and vocal display.

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Castor and Pollux, English National Opera

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

The English National Opera were taking quite a gamble with last night's Rameau premiere. The daunting basics?

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Don Pasquale, Glyndebourne on Tour

David Nice

Who would have thought that in a comic opera by Donizetti, least orchestra-indulgent of Italian composers, the conductor could be paramount?

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The Queen of Spades, Opera North

graham Rickson

This new production, Opera North’s first, sounds fantastic – Tchaikovsky’s lurid colours are brilliantly painted, and the compact dimensions of the Grand Theatre mean that the big orchestral tuttis have a devastating impact. Richard Farnes’s conducting is faultless – this music really swoons, screams and seduces. And despite the occasionally overpowering volume, Farnes never lets his orchestral playing drown out the singers.

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Der Fliegende Holländer, Royal Opera

alexandra Coghlan

Whether or not we believe Wagner’s retrospective rebranding of the opera as a prototype music-drama, “a complete, unbroken web”, Der Fliegende Holländer reliably makes for a vivid evening’s entertainment. Which makes it all the more strange that this is only the work’s third outing at the Royal Opera in almost 20 years.

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Xerxes, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

alexandra Coghlan

“Morning at the airfield: King Xerxes admires the new Spitfire, which he hopes will transform his continental campaign.” If the title – emphatically Xerxes rather than Serse – hadn’t already given the game away, the synopsis for English Touring Opera’s newest Handel production makes it quite clear that we’re not in Kansas (or Italy, or Persia for that matter) any more.

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Katya Kabanova, Welsh National Opera

stephen Walsh

Katie Mitchell’s production of what many regard as Janáček’s greatest opera began life 10 years ago on the stage of Cardiff’s New Theatre; and there are times in this revival when you feel its director Robin Tebbutt’s yearning to be back in that constricted environment, so much better suited to the stifling world which destroys the work’s repressed, self-loathing heroine.

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The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Fiona Shaw's new production of The Marriage of Figaro for the ENO focuses on the theme of entrapment. Her first victim? A noisy bee. Don Basilio finds himself so harassed by its buzzing, he confines it to the body of a harpsichord. Magically, a few seconds later, the low hum reappears - on strings and bassoons.

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Ruddigore, Opera North

graham Rickson

Revived with almost indecent haste, Jo Davies’s 2010 production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore now feels even more polished and slick. Slickness is not a derogatory term here; this staging hits the spot in pretty much every way – musically, dramatically and visually.

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